Hola, dear reader. It is this moment in time when I did a quantum leap and understood some things about myself. This means that I am finally able to approach this “my life and work” narrative.
This letter will be the longest form and the least polished, I suppose. Then I will be able to trim it to fit into my website bio, and maybe it will help me edit all my bios everywhere on the internet.
I also get notifications of people subscribing to my chronicles, and I get excited. I wonder why you subscribe? Do you really read or not? How do new people perceive me? What should I say to explain myself? If you are new here and opened this dispatch, I would be thankful for your feedback on that.
(me in the forest in Altafulla and also in the mountains near Falset)
SO, back to me.
It is very fitting to tell this story now because this year I turn 40. Forty feels like serious stuff, just like 30 did ten years ago. I try not to overthink it, but anniversaries are nice points in time for reflection. I weirdly think that my 30th birthday was just a couple of years ago because the last eight years were somewhat of a crazy ride with pregnancy, becoming a parent, the pandemic, working full-time again after ten years of freelancing, and then quitting, leaving my home country, and going through two immigrations in a row.
Let me introduce myself. I am Vera. I am an artist, photographer, letterer, calligrapher, video maker, and writer. I am also a Russian, immigrant, mother, and partner. Besides that, I am a book lover, nature observer, amateur birdwatcher, and plant enthusiast.
Should I start from the beginning or go back in time?
I will try to start from the beginning. I was born in Moscow in 1984 (Orwellian girl here, yay). My parents (as often happened back then) were in their 20s when I was born, and they divorced a couple of years later. I also have a sister who is four years younger than me, from my mom’s second husband.
I remember my childhood pretty vaguely. So far, I am positive nothing funny happened that could be blocked out or something. There are some bright sparkles of memories: me at our dacha (suburban summer cabin) swimming or collecting insects or eating strawberries; my mom reading "The Hobbit" to me out loud; I read at night under a blanket; I quarrel with my sister (as I see it now, it was a fight for my exhausted mom’s attention). My stepdad ditched us, so my harsh granny (it is hard not to be harsh if you were born into a poor family in the 1937 Soviet Union) moved in to help my now single mom raise two girls and earn some money. They also had to rent out my gran’s apartment in the 90s. The Soviets fell, and times were, well, crazy and uncertain. But I didn’t know anything about those hardships. I was a happy kid, learned in school, went to music classes, read fantasy books, and started listening to rock music.
My father took my education seriously and helped me choose it. He and his wife paid my university fees. I remember the numbers; they felt huge back then, but also from today, they almost feel non-existent. I graduated high school in one year instead of two (back then, some people did this to get an extra year for university entrance exams, especially boys, so they could have more chances to avoid army service). It was an amazing year. I studied in the afternoon, the second shift. So I did not have to wake up at ungodly hours. Also, my sister was away at the usual morning school, and I could have all my mom’s undivided attention.
(TW: next paragraph has some description of violence and death)
I won’t get into much detail here now, but in-between school and university, something horrible happened. Five people in my family died in a terrorist attack; they were blown up while they were sleeping in their own house. It was the first attack of a row of them in 1999, which kind of brought our lovely Mr. President to power. Also, it was before 9/11 in the States, but because it happened to my family, it feels much bigger to me. At 14, I attended my first funeral: five people in open caskets but wrapped in bandages like mummies because of blast burns. It was the case of Russian apartment bombings and the case of poisoned Litvinenko. You can google if you are into history, or DM me, and I can lead you to sources. As I know it now, this has shaped me a lot and definitely traumatized and taught me volumes about politics and the value of human life. But luckily, it did not become my main motive in life.
So I passed the exams and entered the Sociology program at Moscow State University for five years. Back then, we didn’t have a Bachelor/Master system in the universities. It was five years of kind of both, and then you could apply for a Ph.D. They rolled in the BA/MA system a few years later.
University years were fun. We had a small group of nerds among mostly fancy students. Then it was a “cool” thing if your kids learned sociology or management. It was the next cool thing after the boom of the 90s economists and lawyers. So we had a lot of Instagram-like girls (there was no Instagram then), or kids from rich families, or kids who were brought to the university by the driver and sometimes with a bodyguard. I don’t know much about them, though; I was stuck to my group of geeks. We read fantasy and sci-fi, one guy played guitar and had long hair, we adored our Western Philosophy professor, we dressed weirdly, and drank bad instant coffee from the cafeteria. I also started browsing the internet, finding “my” people, hanging out in forums, downloading MP3 music, buying and ripping CDs, reading in English, and communicating in English, and I also went to A LOT of rock concerts in dingy clubs.
This is how I actually tried out photography. I took pictures of our headbangers fan club members and tried making pictures of musicians on stage. These were objectively not good photos, but it got me into the whole craft. Eventually, I became better and took promo pictures of bands and weddings of friends while I started working as a copywriter in an advertising agency. I still did university. So yeah, my 20s were very much crazy. I got this copywriter job as an experiment of our creative director, who wanted to combine an absolutely zero-experience but brave enough person with a seasoned professional. I guess I was crazy enough to say yes. I was offered a choice of who I wanted to be: an art director or a copywriter. I have to say that I chickened out and chose copywriting because at least I knew how to write. I knew some Photoshop tricks from photography, of course, but I had no idea about design and art direction. Sometimes I wonder what I would be now if I had chosen art director then. I will never know; it is now a game where one cannot load a saved version before this choice.
So I graduated from university with a degree in Sociology of Communicative Systems, but I never worked as a sociologist. Though I suppose this education helps me greatly to perceive the modern world. I was working full-time as a creative copywriter and doing side gigs as a photographer - sometimes paid, sometimes pro bono.
Then DSLR cameras began to enter the video world, and I had a new camera that could also film those beautiful films with bokeh and shallow depth. I was hooked. I tried my hand at making some extra videos at weddings, and people loved it. I actually started to get more video commissions than photo. By that time, I was making as much money with freelance gigs as I did with my office job. So I figured that if I used office hours for freelance, I would make even more. So I left my office job in advertising in 2012.
I worked for eight years as a creative copywriter in agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, O’Gilvy, and some others. I did not create any award-winning ad videos or win any creative awards, but this experience definitely taught me a lot. I learned how to negotiate, brainstorm, write creative concepts, build scripts, work as a team, and also have fun. I also met a lot of amazing people. My writing was damaged, though. Sometimes I had to rewrite the copy so many times that I seriously doubted my ability to express myself correctly. It was really crippling. This Substack is my healing therapy. When I get such nice feedback from my readers, I feel that something in me gets fixed, and I actually think that I can write.
When I quit my job and became a full-time freelancer, I had some unused hours. When my friend expressed interest in learning the fancy hobby of calligraphy and asked me to join him, I jumped in and remembered that an ex-colleague had a course on that. I connected the three of us, and we started a mini-group. My friend dropped out, and I got seriously involved.
(one of my older short videos that I did for the school of calligraphy where I learnt the craft)
Calligraphy and lettering gave me the option to adorn my wedding videos with unique thumbnails and titles. It was a nice selling point, and clients loved it. My calligraphy was noticed by the wedding industry, leading to gigs as a wedding calligrapher for invitation design and custom calligraphy, which was popular in rustic and boho-styled weddings. It was an emerging and booming style, and I loved it. I wrote a lot of calligraphy. At some point, I was doing almost no photography and only a handful of videos. My income was entirely from wedding calligraphy. I was one of the few in the market who could write Cyrillic letters beautifully. I still think those were my most prosperous years as a freelancer.
(one of my calligraphy projects)
I started dating a guy who is now my partner and the father of our son. Back then, he was restarting his career from zero, switching from law, which he hated, to becoming a scrum master in IT. So we lived off my income while he was building his career, and we also decided to get pregnant at some point.
My wedding calligraphy business cooled down a bit because many new calligraphers appeared and undercut prices. Additionally, I was getting tired of the same old routine. Two of my friends got a deal to publish a book and suggested to the publisher that I do the lettering for the title. This is how I got into the publishing world. Word spread, and I started getting gigs around 2015. In 2016, I was pregnant (and then a mom with a newborn), so I couldn't do wedding calligraphy anymore due to the long hours and travel required. Working on lettering for books became a perfect part-time job for me (if you know me even a little, you know I'm an absolute bookworm). It provided some pocket money while my partner took on the financial responsibilities. I started drawing more, sketching here and there when my son gave me time. There was a pivotal moment for me—I asked myself what I wanted to do with the scraps of time I had for myself. The answer came quickly: painting and drawing. I was surprised but realized I had been too scared and had little faith in myself to become a painter. I had always chosen other creative paths—copywriter, art director, photographer, calligrapher. But all these jobs were about being creative, learning composition, colors, and linework. It just wasn’t painting.
(I sketched or painted while keeping at eye on him)
To be continued next week - the whole thing appeared to be too big and I took advices and decided to cut it in two smaller pieces.
In the end, I will leave a plethora of links that are WIP or working well of everything that is me on the internet. Any kind of interaction with those is very much welcome, as it helps me to build my career.
WEBSITE - I am reworking my website now, adding photography, brushing lettering and illustration sections, rewriting bio, etc.
YOUTUBE - new videos go on with no schedule, as they brew slowly sometimes.
DONATION JAR - buymeacoffee is the way for one time donations, monthly ones and a little DIGITAL SHOP which will also get new products soon.
Here is a cloud of my instagrams, as much as I hate the whole system there, I post occasionally and keep in touch with people who use it as a messenger (still better then whatsap or facebook).
https://www.instagram.com/veragolosova.art/ - my illustration and lettering are here, also occasional stories.
https://www.instagram.com/instantes.vibrantes - newest one I did to create a photography gallery as a store front.
https://www.instagram.com/veragolosova - the old personal mammoth which can track my life back to 2010 or 2012, not sure, I really want to see this first post, but cannot find a way to do it easily. Too lazy to scroll. The thing has 6k posts, lol, some of them with those oldschool insta filters.